Allowing Your Sacramento Short Sale Home to Become a Dump is Stupid

The only thing worse than not being able to show a home, from a Sacramento Realtor point of view, is when a buyer’s agent opens the door with an eager buyer in tow to discover the occupants of the home are slumped toward the TV, half-dressed on the sofa, slurping Big Gulps and chomping on Cheez-Its, slopping orangey bits everywhere. The zombies don’t even look up nor acknowledge there is another presence in the room. Stuff scattered everywhere, dog poop on the floor, not to mention flies buzzing the stack of dishes dumped into the kitchen sink. Not a pretty sight. And not an easy way to sell a short sale home in Sacramento.

Yet, we deal with these situations every day. Sometimes, Sacramento short sale sellers will rationalize the condition of the home by nodding: “it’s a short sale,” as though that explains it, and it doesn’t. Just because a home is a short sale does not mean the condition can go to hell in a hand basket. Because the bank will definitely still demand market value. And a buyer won’t offer market value when the house is in a shambles. Big disconnect. Huge problem.

Where is the dignity? You can sell your home as a short sale and still maintain your dignity. In fact, that’s the reason most people want to do a Sacramento short sale, because they want to sell with integrity intact. They prefer to witness a final solution and know that they are selling the home, not abandoning it.

If you want to abandon your home, then you might want to consider doing what so many before you have chosen to do and walk away from your home. Just let the home go to foreclosure. Let the bank deal with the repercussions. That’s sticking it to the bank and ruining your credit as well, but that’s a choice some people make.

Just don’t ask an agent to sell your home as a short sale to a precious buyer who is willing to wait 2 to 3 months for the bank to approve your short sale at market value while maintaining the home in a condition unfit for human habitation. The only entity you’re sticking it to in that situation is yourself.